London Underground prank signs take the web by storm

22/01/2014

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I live in London but I usually try to avoid the tube at all costs. Now I'm almost regretting it.

What could be possibly better than barely catching your 8.05 train and not finding a place on the overcrowded compartment just to rise your eyes and catch a glimpse of a perfectly plausible sign that reads something like “No eye contact - £200 Penalty”... absolutely priceless!

Guerrilla stickers have been popping up on the Tube network for a while now, but it's the first time that they are being widely acknowledged and their many layers of meaning enjoyed and examined by such a high percentage of commuters.

Technically speaking, sticking anything on an Underground train is illegal, but considering that these signs are very cleverly devised to look exactly like the real thing in a manner that very much recalls Banksy's 'official' stencils of the early 90s, this probably makes them more of a nuisance from the legal point of view.

However, the entertainment value of these new guerrilla stickers is unprecedented. Anyone on the tube with a bit of sense of humour can't possibly resist bursting in a sound laugh at the sight of anything as witty and spot on as: "Peak Hours may necessitate that you let other people sit on your lap".

Who's behind this prank? We simply don't know, maybe some street artist, maybe a collective of people - does it matter? Probably not, probably in fact anonymity makes this project all more powerful, because somehow it speaks for all the people that are normally targeted by endless do and don't messages and probably feel like they had enough.

A sort of 'occupy the signs', a reaction from passengers fed up of being treated like children, according to a professor at the London School of Economics quoted by BBC news.

You never know, the tube guerrilla stickers may be such a roaring success that London Underground could decide to step in a make its own "We apologies that all apologies for the chronic overcrowding on this train are shallow and menaingless" signs, for the happiness of all commuters. That would be utterly awesome.